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enSun, 29 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0100http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/hurricane-strength-winds-pummel-europe-three-killed-in-germany.562186
Updated 7.50pm - At least three people in Germany were killed today when hurricane-force winds lashed across northern Europe in one of the most severe storms in years that also cancelled flights, disrupted road and train traffic, and hit port operations.
The Dutch meteorological office issued a code red warning for the low-lying country's northern and coastal provinces, as gusts of up to 120 kph (75 mph) battered the Netherlands, causing damage estimated at several million euros.
German weather service spokesman Peter Hartmann said winds reached up to 160 kph on higher ground.
"This is one of the heaviest storms in recent years," he said, noting that such hurricane-force winds were highly unusual for this time of the year.
Two state road workers were killed in the western region of Rhineland-Palatinate when a falling tree hit their vehicle, state authorities said. Another man died in front of his house when a stone wall collapsed near the city of Magdeburg in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, police said.
About 140 flights were cancelled at Frankfurt airport with one runway shut, an airport spokesperson said.
A spokesman for Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, Europe's fourth... ]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2015 19:48:00 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/hurricane-strength-winds-pummel-europe-three-killed-in-germany.562186http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/three-arrested-in-connection-with-paris-killings.562193
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 18:49:00 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/three-arrested-in-connection-with-paris-killings.562193http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/kidnappers-killed-prosecutor-injured-in-turkey.562188
Updated - Three far-left kidnappers who held an Istanbul prosecutor hostage today were shot and killed in a raid by special forces, while the prosecutor himself was seriously injured.
Earlier, the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) published a picture of the prosecutor with a gun to his head and said it would kill him .
Istanbul police chief Selami Altinok said negotiators had been talking to the hostage-takers.
The prosecutor, Mehmet Selim Kiraz, was leading an investigation into the death last March of 15-year-old Berkin Elvan, who died after nine months in a coma from a head wound sustained in anti-government protests.
The DHKP-C said on its website it wanted the police officer it blames for Elvan's death to confess on television, the officers involved to be tried in "people's courts", and charges against those who attended protests for Elvan to be dropped.
Witnesses said they heard gunshots as the hostage-takers entered the building.
"We were on the sixth floor. A black-haired man wearing a suit entered the prosecutor's room and fired a gun three times," Mehmet Hasan Kaplan, who works in the building, told Reuters, adding that the attackers also claimed... ]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2015 15:30:00 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/kidnappers-killed-prosecutor-injured-in-turkey.562188http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/italy-vatican-near-deal-on-financial-information-sharing.562187
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 15:10:00 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/italy-vatican-near-deal-on-financial-information-sharing.562187http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/insurers-set-aside-300m-over-germanwings-crash.562175
Lufthansa says its insurers are setting aside $300 million to deal with possible costs resulting from the French Alps crash in which 150 people died.
Lufthansa spokeswoman Kerstin Lau said that is the amount currently reserved to deal with "all costs arising in connection with the case".
Last week, the company offered immediate aid of up to €50,000 per passenger to relatives of the victims.
Those payments are separate from any eventual compensation payments over the Germanwings crash.
Prosecutors believe, based on data from the cockpit voice recorder, that the Airbus A320's co-pilot locked his captain out of the cockpit and deliberately crashed Flight 9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf last Tuesday. ]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2015 12:34:00 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/insurers-set-aside-300m-over-germanwings-crash.562175http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/anne-frank-died-on-earlier-date.562174
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 12:33:00 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/anne-frank-died-on-earlier-date.562174http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/solar-plane-stops-in-china.562168
The first round-the-world solar-powered flight landed in China today, completing the fifth leg of its round the world attempt.
The 35,000 km journey is seeking to demonstrate that flying long distances fuelled by renewable energy is possible.
The Solar Impulse 2 arrived in the Chinese city of Chongqing after a flight of 20 and a half hours from Mandalay in Myanmar.
It is making its way around the earth in about 25 flight days at speeds of between 50 kph and 100 kph.
The next leg will see the plane cross to Nanjing in eastern China before crossing the Pacific Ocean via a stop over in Hawaii.
The aircraft is as heavy as a family car at 2,300 kg but has a wingspan as wide as the largest airliner.
The design and construction of the Solar Impulse took 12 years. A first version of the craft rolled out in 2009 and broke records for height and distance travelled by a manned solar plane.
The pilot who flew the fifth leg of the journey was Bertrand Piccard. He and fellow pilot Andre Borschberg are taking turns at the controls of Solar Impulse 2, which began its journey in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates on March 9. ]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2015 10:50:00 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/solar-plane-stops-in-china.562168http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/madonna-backs-new-streaming-service.562163
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 10:09:00 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/madonna-backs-new-streaming-service.562163http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/us-russian-crew-reaches-space-station-for-year-long-stay.562084
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly was all smiles as he spoke to earth from the International Space Station which he described as "like coming to my old home".
Kelly is on a one-year mission, the first of its kind, with plans for important research that will help doctors, scientists and mission planners better understand the physical and psychological effects of long-duration spaceflight.
"Hopefully the current crews and previous crews and future crews, not just Misha and myself, will be furthering our goals to put humans on Mars some day," said Kelly.
Kelly, age 51 and cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko, age 54, and Gennady Padalka, age 56, arrived at the Space Station via Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday.
The three person crew joined Commander Terry Virts, and Cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Samantha Christoforetti who were already at the space station.
Kornienko will stay with Kelly for the year-long stay.
Padalka will return to Earth in September after racking up 878 days in space, setting a new record for the total amount of time anyone has spent in space.
"The international partnership is one of the things that's made this such a... ]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2015 07:33:00 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/us-russian-crew-reaches-space-station-for-year-long-stay.562084http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/briton-admits-us-terror-charges.562083
Tue, 31 Mar 2015 07:02:00 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/briton-admits-us-terror-charges.562083http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/germanwings-co-pilot-had-suicidal-tendencies.562148
The Germanwings co-pilot suspected of deliberately crashing a plane in the French Alps last week had been treated in the past for suicidal tendencies, German state prosecutors said yesterday.
“Several years ago before obtaining his pilot’s licence the co-pilot was in a long period of psychotherapeutic treatment with noticeable suicidal tendencies,” the prosecutors’ office in Düsseldorf, where the pilot Andreas Lubitz lived and where the flight from Barcelona was heading, said in the statement.
The prosecutors’ office, which quoted “relevant medical documentation” as the basis for its findings, added that since that period Lubitz had not shown any signs of suicidal behaviour or aggressive tendencies towards others in visits to doctors.
The Germanwings Airbus crashed into a remote area of the French Alps last Tuesday, killing everyone on board.
Investigators believe the 27-year-old Lubitz locked the pilot out of the cockpit and deliberately set the plane to descend and crash into the mountainside.
The prosecutors said yesterday that they had not found any evidence Lubitz was planning such an attack, nor his reason behind it.
“No special circumstances have come to light, whether in... ]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:01:13 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/germanwings-co-pilot-had-suicidal-tendencies.562148http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/Western-Libyan-rocket-strike-kills-one-foreigner-wounds-eight-people.562149
A Filipino was killed and eight people were wounded when a rocket likely to have targeted a refinery hit the western Libyan town of Zawiya, a Libyan official said yesterday.
Town council head Mohamed Khadrawi said the wounded comprised three Filipinos, one African national and four Libyans.
He said a Grad rocket had hit an area near a car the foreign workers had been travelling in to go home after work.
The Zawiya region has seen fighting between rival factions allied to two governments and parliaments competing for power in a complex struggle in the oil producer involving different tribes, regions, Islamists and more secular forces.
A source from forces allied to the internationally-recognised government based in the east denied claims by some officials in Tripoli – which is controlled by a rival government – that they had fired a Grad in the direction of Zawiya or a nearby 120,000 barrels a day refinery.
The official government is based in the east after Tripoli was seized by a rival faction in August, reinstating a previous assembly and setting up a rival government.
Both sides have been attacking each other with war planes.
The official government had recently launched a... ]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:01:12 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/Western-Libyan-rocket-strike-kills-one-foreigner-wounds-eight-people.562149http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/greece-has-to-flesh-out-reformto-get-more-aid.562150
Greece’s biggest creditor Germany said yesterday that the eurozone would give Athens no further financial aid until it has a more detailed list of reforms and some are enacted into law, adding to scepticism over plans presented last week.
A senior official in Brussels on Sunday had dismissed the list as “ideas” rather than a plan that Greece could submit to EU and IMF lenders to avoid running out of cash next month.
Eurozone states are still waiting for Greece to send a more comprehensive list, a German finance ministry spokesman said.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said Athens had a certain degree of flexibility on which reforms to implement but that they must “add up” to the satisfaction of European partners.
“The question is can and will Greece fulfil the expectations that we all have,” she said during a visit to Helsinki.
“There can be variation as far as which measures a government opts for but in the end the overall framework must add up.”
There was no immediate reaction from Athens on whether the list would be amended further. Lenders have said it could take several more days before a proper list was ready. Greek and other eurozone officials from the Euro Working Group are due... ]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:01:11 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/greece-has-to-flesh-out-reformto-get-more-aid.562150http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/British-Parliament-dissolved-election-campaign-is-now-on.562151
Campaigning in Britain’s closest election in decades began yesterday after Prime Minister David Cameron met Queen Elizabeth to tell her Parliament had been dissolved, teeing up for a fraught battle to govern a $2.8 trillion economy.
Cameron made the journey to Buckingham Palace to see the monarch in an armoured limousine as TV crews buzzed overhead, a formality marking the end of five years of coalition government between his Conservatives and the centre-left Liberal Democrats.
Britain excels at set-piece constitutional events. The consequences of the May 7 election - which polls predict nobody will win with an outright majority – look more disorderly.
Membership of the EU could hang on the outcome as does the future of the increasingly frayed relationship between the United Kingdom and its most restive part: Scotland.
Standing in front of his Downing Street office after meeting the Queen, Cameron told voters he had presided over an economic recovery that needed cementing.
“In 38 days you face a stark choice,” he said. “The next prime minister walking through that door will be me or Labour leader Ed Miliband. You can choose an economy that grows ... or you can choose the... ]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:01:10 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/British-Parliament-dissolved-election-campaign-is-now-on.562151http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/Pakistan-joins-Saudi-coalition-against-Yemen-Houthi-rebels.562152
Pakistan will send troops to Saudi Arabia to give military support to a coalition of mainly Gulf states fighting Yemeni Houthi rebels, a senior government official said yesterday.
Largely Sunni Muslim Pakistan - a regional ally of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf’s main Sunni Muslim power – would join a Saudi-led military coalition conducting air strikes against Shi’ite Houthi forces, the official said.
The air strikes are targeting the rebels’ southward advance on the port city of Aden, the last bastion of Saudi-backed President, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Pakistan’s Defence Minister, Khawaj Asif, denied that the country had made a decision to send troops to Saudi Arabia, saying that a delegation led by him and foreign policy chief Sartaj Aziz would go to Saudi Arabia today and then decide.
Saudi Arabia has not decided yet whether to send ground troops into Yemen but is keeping its options open, its ambassador to the United States said on Sunday, but was committed to completing its air campaign. Nuclear-armed Pakistan shares a long border with Iran, considered to be the centre of Shi’ite power, and has a warm relationship with Saudi Arabia, Iran’s main regional rival. An estimated 20... ]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:01:09 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/Pakistan-joins-Saudi-coalition-against-Yemen-Houthi-rebels.562152http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/Iran-and-six-powers-entrenched-as-clock-ticks-to-nuclear-deadline.562153
Iran and six major powers struggled yesterday to reach an initial nuclear accord as “gloom” set in , with both sides sticking to their positions a day before a self-imposed deadline.
For days Iran, the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China have been trying to break an impasse in negotiations aimed at stopping Tehran having the capacity to develop a nuclear bomb, in exchange for an easing of UN sanctions .
But officials at the talks in the Swiss city of Lausanne said attempts to reach a framework accord, which is intended as a prelude to a comprehensive agreement by the end of June, could yet fall apart. Negotiators from all parties appeared increasingly pessimistic.
“If we don’t have some type of framework agreement now, it will be difficult to explain why we would be able to have one by June 30,” said a Western diplomat. He said three major sticking points must be resolved if Iran and the six powers are to secure the deal before March 31.
The diplomat said the most difficult issues related to the duration of any limits on Iranian uranium enrichment and research and development activities after an initial 10 years, the lifting of the sanctions and the restoring of them... ]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:01:08 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/Iran-and-six-powers-entrenched-as-clock-ticks-to-nuclear-deadline.562153http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/window-to-the-outside-world.562154
A $50 portable media player is providing many North Koreans a window to the outside world despite the government’s efforts to keep its people isolated − a symbol of change in one of the world’s most repressed societies.
By some estimates, up to half of all urban North Korean households have an easily concealed ‘notel’, a small portable media player used to watch DVDs or content stored on USB sticks that can be easily smuggled into the country and passed hand to hand.
People are exchanging South Korean soaps, pop music, Hollywood films and news programmes, all of which are expressly prohibited by the Pyongyang regime, according to North Korean defectors, activists and recent visitors to the isolated country.
“The North Korean government takes its national ideology extremely seriously, so the spread of all this media that competes with its propaganda is a big and growing problem for them,” said Sokeel Park of Liberty in North Korea (Link), an organisation that works with defectors.
“If Pyongyang fails to successfully adapt to these trends, it could threaten the long-term survival of the regime itself.”
North Koreans have been spending money more openly, a sign that some forms of... ]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:01:07 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/window-to-the-outside-world.562154http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/Director-Gene-Saks-dies.562155
Gene Saks, a prolific actor-director who teamed up with playwright Neil Simon on hit Broadway shows and movie productions such as The Odd Couple and Brighton Beach Memoirs, has died. He was 93.
Saks, who won three Tony Awards for his direction, died from pneumonia at his home in East Hampton, New York, according to his son Daniel.
Saks’s hits also included many without Simon. Among them were the musicals Mame (1966), starring Angela Lansbury and his then-wife Bea Arthur; Half a Sixpence, starring British pop star Tommy Steele (1965), and I Love My Wife (1977), as well as such comedies as Enter Laughing (1963) and Same Time, Next Year (1975).
The Simon-Saks collaboration had its beginnings in 1963 when Simon asked Saks – then a Broadway actor – to come to New Hope, Pennsylvania, and critique Barefoot in the Park.
Simon did not need much help. The play – under Mike Nichols’ direction – turned out to be one of Broadway’s biggest hits of the 1960s, running for more than 1,500 performances.
But three years later, when Simon was preparing the film version of Barefoot in the Park, he persuaded producer Hal Wallis to hire Saks as director of his first movie. The film, which starred... ]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:01:06 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/Director-Gene-Saks-dies.562155http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/singer-greenbaum-in-critical-condition-after-car-accident.562156
Norman Greenbaum, the singer-songwriter behind the 1969 rock hit Spirit in the Sky, is in a critical condition after a car accident that killed a motorcyclist in his Northern California home city.
Greenbaum, 72, who wrote and sang the hit song and featured in 50 films and several TV shows, was a passenger in a Subaru Outback that turned left and crossed into the motorcycle’s path in Santa Rosa, the Press Democrat in Santa Rosa said.
The motorcycle’s 20-year-old driver, Ihab Usama Halaweh, died at the scene and his passenger was also critically injured.
Authorities said the car driver was not injured and alcohol was not suspected. ]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:01:05 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/singer-greenbaum-in-critical-condition-after-car-accident.562156http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/World-briefs.562157
A computer programme usually used to draw up e-fits of wanted criminals has been used to create the faces of the most beautiful man and woman in the world.
The pictures are the result of a two-month-long study led by Dr Chris Solomon, a world expert in facial mapping, that asked people to put together a composite of the perfect face using the EFIT-V PhotoFit software used by UK police.
The software takes into account factors including the thickness of lips, nose length and width, and hairline.
Row over king’s reburial sales
Church leaders have condemned online profiteers for attempting to sell orders of service for Richard III’s reburial for hundreds of pounds on eBay.
Dozens of copies of specially printed card booklets produced for the series of high-profile services at Leicester Cathedral, where the king was reinterred on March 26, have been appearing on the internet auction site.
Some are being bundled together and listed as souvenir packs, along with a copy of a local newspaper, for £300 plus £2.50 postage.
Alice emerges as new favourite
Punters have staked a significant amount on the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge naming their second baby Alice – leaving one bookmaker facing... ]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:01:04 +0200http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150331/world/World-briefs.562157